A simple game that I now use a few times a week is called “What’s That Color?”
What’s That Color is a great ESL colors game that I came up with about a week ago when I went into my last class of the weekend. It was a class of students that fall in the mid-level range for English abilities, and they’re a bit older, I’d say 11 to 13. I always wonder how students who are that old can have such lower-level English abilities, especially considering that they’ve been teaching English in public schools for some time in China.
Anyways, what I did was put up all of the colors on the board, about 8 to 10. I joked with the students, chose one, and said, “Alright, how do you spell green?” The students weren’t quite sure if I was serious, and then after a good smile, I told them what we’d do.
How It Works
The way I did it in class was I had each student go individually. They had to stand up and say how many they could think of, and their team would get that many points. I divided the class up into girls and boys to make this easier. Students got about 4 to 5 answers each time.
An important thing to consider is how you want to count answers. I told the students that they could only have one ‘clothes.’ If you don’t do this you’ll get answers like “blue dress, blue shoes, blue pants, blue shirt, blue t-shirt.” I just don’t think that’s fair. Another thing is food. You might want to limit that to 1 to 2 answers, although if something particularly creative comes up, I’d count it. Few students know what an eggplant is, but they do know the “purple vegetable.”